LISTSERV - TMSUSERS Archives - SI-LISTSERV.SI.EDU

Hi Allison,

We are in the process of sorting out all our Culture names across the museum. We have finished the review of cultures in the Americas, Africa and Oceania and are still working on Asia. We decided to create a hierarchical authority that begins with broad geographical divisions. Our terms combine the indigenous name (as preferred name) along with the western name for a given people (for increased accessibility to a western audience who only know the western terms).

Selecting a preferred name proved a bit problematic at times as deciding which group within the indigenous community is authoritative re: the name to use can be complicated. We want to use the name a people use for themselves, but that isn't always straightforward. To further complicate the terminology, within the hierarchy we have combined Group and Sub-group names for clarity and ease of association, even though this required us to create names not exactly as used by the peoples themselves. It did serve to bypass a lack of 'inheritance' of terms once the records are out on our website, however, where currently there is not otherwise a way to know all the sub-groups of a given group.

At any rate, this is where we currently stand. We've set up the Culture fields to use Ctrl + Insert to access the authority to ensure users will use the correct spellings/formats. It is a work in progress and only represents the cultural groups present in our collections now, so will likely grow over time.

I am attaching our 'how to' document for entering the terms along with a pdf of the Culture Hierarchy itself. If you (or anyone else reading this) has any questions or comments about it, please get in touch.

All the best,
Frances

On Fri, May 25, 2018 at 4:00 PM, TMSUSERS automatic digest system <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

There is 1 message totaling 240 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

1. How are you using TMS Constituents for Indigenous Cultural Names?

To unsubscribe, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the following commands in the body of the email:

signoff TMSUSERS

// eoj

You will receive a confirmation that your subscription has been removed.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 25 May 2018 20:36:56 +0000
From: Allison Evans <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: How are you using TMS Constituents for Indigenous Cultural Names?

Hello TMS users,

Most of our collection is by indigenous peoples and we are struggling with TMS capabilities for searching constituents from the Objects Module. We are looking at moving toward using the names people call themselves rather than the colonized names given them because it is more culturally appropriate. However, we understand users search for with all sorts of names. For example if a user searches "Sioux" the results should include all objects associated with Lakota, Dakota, Nakota as well as the communities within those groups such as Oglala, Brule, Blackfeet, etc. as well as the reservations they currently live on.

Does anyone have procedures for entering indigenous names?

We are using TMS2016 R2.

Thank you for your help and ideas. Please feel free to contact me off the listserv.

Allison

Allison Evans
Director of Museum Collections
Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art
500 W. Washington St, Indianapolis, IN 46204
Direct: 317-275-1358
[log in to unmask]<mailto:ae [log in to unmask]>

To unsubscribe, send an email to [log in to unmask] with the following commands in the body of the email:

signoff TMSUSERS

// eoj

You will receive a confirmation that your subscription has been removed.

------------------------------

End of TMSUSERS Digest - 24 May 2018 to 25 May 2018 (#2018-65)
**************************************************************

Frances Lloyd-Baynes | Content Database Specialist
Minneapolis Institute of Art
2400 Third Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55404

612-870-3189 | [log in to unmask] | www.artsmia.org